I believe taht all civs should start out the same and that points should be able to be attributed into different cattagories to make the civs unique.

For instance you are given 3 points to put them into one or more catagories in the begining. Lets say you chose seafareing, the first point would start you with that advance, the second would give you a trimarine and a -50% of getting lost at sea and the third point would give you +1 sea move points, the 4th point would give......etc. anyway you would get more points by building certain wonders, say lighthouse +1 seafareing, or tsun tu's would give +1 military

heres how i see it broken down.

-Seafaring- above
-Military-Mil techs, units, less maintaince, morale bonus,
-Growth-growth techs such as irigation or granary advace, +growthrate
-happiness-+happiness, happyness structures, less unhappy peaple
-religion- cannot rebel, free cathedrals, religious techs such as theocracy and fundamentalism, reduced unhapiness with each point
-economics-trade bonuses, income bonuses, bonus gold, -
-science-science bonus, free advaces, research buildings,

I would suggest that this system has a very minor effect. Not enough to totally overhaul each civ, but just enough to each a distinct 'flavour'. The Seafaring specialisation example you gave would seem to find this happy medium perfectly.

However, I think some of the other ideas you've mentioned for other specialisation categories are a bit extreme.

Religion: Free cathedrals? Cannot rebel? Too powerful, if you ask me.

when i wrote this i was tinkering with the idea of neggatives as well as positives to these points, i had concidered adding a -science percentage to religion, because i considered it way to powerful.

Allocating objective advantage points regardless of what civilization you begin with, since having preset advantages with no points would make less sense.

For example, the Anglo-Saxons did not ineivitably become the most powerful naval country in the world by the 18th century.

As for the categories I'd like to add 2 more:

- construction: city improvements (CI) cost less shields, less time to discover building-related techs (masonry, construction, bridge-building, railroad), CIs have more hit points (if military units can attack buildings), other production bonuses

I mean, I like more some kind bonus/minus earned by play style (other threads explained well, but to keep it simple I mean a civ that build a lot of ship gain some navigation bonus but probably loose some point in port town happines, a civ that trade a lot gain some money bonus (and may be an espionage bonus too), and so on.

If this end to be too much to handle by lazy Firaxis programmer (just kidding, you guys ), I can support your idea.

I suggest that game start with a bunch of pre-game turns, where you have time to explore surrounding as a "nomadic tribe", gain first knowledge (by cut scene?), meet minor tribes and thus develop your "starting mood" during these negotiations.

During this pre-game you can't do advanced choices (e.g. no unit building), you only define your tribe giving it a credible "background".

Points assignment must be related to pre-game actions, not really hiding them, but giving them a realistic feel, better than "play special cards" of fantasy card game.

After a defined number of turns, building first city from your nomadic tribe will start proper game as all we know.